Using Mobile Communication Technology in High School Education: Motivation, Pressure, and Learning Performance

Rau, Pei-Luen Patrick; Gao, Qin; Wu, Li-Mei

Computers & Education, v50 n1 p1-22 Jan 2008

Motivation and pressure are considered two factors impacting vocational senior high school student learning. New communication technology, especially mobile communication technology, is supposed to be effective in encouraging interaction between the student and the instructor and improving learning efficiency. Social presence and information richness theory was applied to analyze the media and their impacts on the instruction process firstly. Then the author observed firstly the impact of using individual communication technologies--namely Short Message Service (SMS), email, and online forum--on student learning motivation, pressure, and performance, based on a comparative investigation of 176 students. Then the impacts of using combination of mobile and Internet communication technology--SMS + email, SMS + online forum--were examined with another experiment of 45 students. The result showed that instant messaging helps bonding the two roles--student and instructor--in the instruction process effectively. When combined with Internet communication media, it can significantly increase student extrinsic motivation without causing higher pressure. Additionally, communication media demanding public expression rather than private dialogue should be adopted with careful consideration, since they may raise student pressure.